This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.
An earliest virtual role in the prior art, such as an electronic virtual role, etc., can only be shown on a display of an electronic terminal operated by a user, and the user can only interact with his/her own virtual role.
With the development of network services, web chat has become a popular online service for network users. When chatting with a friend, the users may start their virtual role clients to realize communication of their virtual roles, e.g. chatting partners, via a PET-TO-PET communication channel, e.g. display the virtual role of a user in a user interface of a chatting partner synchronously.
FIG. 1 is a flowchart for synchronously displaying a virtual role in accordance with the prior art. As shown in FIG. 1:
In step S101, a client of User A initiates a request to a chatting partner server requesting to chat with a virtual role of User B;
In step S102, the chatting partner server stores user information of two users performing virtual role chatting and generates an MD5 authenticating character string for authentication;
In step S103, the client of User A acquires the MD5 authenticating character string.
In step S104, the client of User A informs the client of User B of the MD5 authenticating character string through a system message.
In step S105, User A and User B start their respective virtual role clients. The virtual role clients respectively display a shape of the virtual role of the other party on their electronic terminals based on shape data of the virtual roles stored in the chatting partner server.
In step S106, the two virtual role clients display the shapes of the virtual roles of the two users on desktops of the two users synchronously via a system message communication channel.
In the prior art, a user can only display his/her virtual role on the user interface of his/her friend while chatting with the friend. The user, however, can not implement a trip of the virtual role, i.e. making his/her virtual role disappear from his/her virtual role client and appear on the user interface of a destination virtual role client of the trip. Thus the user of the virtual role can not experience the fun of his/her virtual role leaving and returning to the user interface of the local virtual role client.
There are two types of clients in the prior art, i.e. user clients for processing user-related actions and procedures, such as chatting between users; and virtual role clients for processing virtual role-related actions and procedures, such as actions performed by virtual roles to imitate actions in real-life, e.g. laboring, playing, etc.
Firstly, from the above prior art process, the users do not start the virtual role clients from step S101 to step S104, that is, the interactions between the virtual roles are performed by user clients instead of virtual role clients. And the interactions between the virtual roles can only take place after the two users start the chatting procedure, i.e. after the two user clients begin communicating with each other, which is inconvenient for the users.
Secondly, there is no connection maintained between the chatting partner server and the virtual role clients after the virtual role chatting is started, and the chatting partner server only functions as a temporary storage of virtual role data (e.g. shape data and so on). There is no actual interaction between the virtual roles but synchronous display of actions triggered by system messages without an interaction function.